Strange Bedfellows
by EleanorRigbee
Summary: “Guess you’re expecting me to invite you up.” He smirks, and she just smiles. “It’s a sure thing.”...Robin spends the night in Casa de Barney.


**Disclaimer: Don't own How I Met Your Mother, but I'm pretty sure it's the best TV comedy I've seen in maybe forever. **

**A/N: **I fell in love with this show hard and fast people, almost like love at first sight, except that it was actually the first two minutes of the episode. That said, it was difficult to write because the writers write such brilliant dialogue it's sort of intimidating. Especially Barney. I can only hope I did right by him. **Robin's PoV, Post-Something Blue, Barney/Robin, early in an establish relationship, no spoilers for S4. Read, review, let me know what you think.**

-

His apartment is everything Lily told her it would be. All sharp corners and dark colors, all things meant to repel anything with double X-chromosomes come morning.

But there's also a life size storm trooper and a balcony and a TV that required a tugboat to breach U.S. soil. "That's kinda awesome, in a completely materialistic, unsocialable, closet-geek sort of way."

Barney goes selectively deaf for everything following 'awesome'.

-

The bed is huge. Like literally huge.

And there's only one pillow. Which isn't really a problem when all you're doing is playing Battleship, but it kinda becomes a problem in the aftermath of horizontal conflicts.

"Dibs on the pillow."

"You can't call dibs, Scherbatsky, this isn't your pad. Nothing here is up for grabs. It's all already got an owner. Daddy's _right_ _here_." To points to himself with both hands and throws her a wink before his face goes completely serious. "Ergo, no dibs."

"Hey, we could have gone to my place. You're the one who invited me back—"

"Yeah, 'cause your place was giving me claustrophobia. I mean really, how do you live in such close quarters? I half expect a small Armenian family to accost me for bread money whenever I walkinto a room. The walls were starting to warp out of shape from the pressure of my awesome trying to be confined within such a tiny space."

"Whatever." Her hand slides over to the pillow, fingers already curling into the pillowcase.

"Don't think so." he slaps her hand away and sticks the pillow firmly under his head. "Unless," he waggles his eyebrows at her, mouth quirked into a well-worn grin, "you have something to bargain with."

She raises her own eyebrow in return. "Oh, I do."

-

In the end they flip for it, because he can't resist a bet and she not only loses the pillow, she's out twenty dollars for her troubles.

The blanket is another issue entirely but it's an easier fix at least.

"You ever heard of personal space, Scherbatsky?" he gripes when she moves closer, leg thrown over his hip.

She doesn't miss how his hand tightens on her shoulder, pulls her closer anyway.

His chest rises and falls beneath her head and while its nice, there's no way she's gonna sleep like this.

"Okay, roll over."

"Scherbatsky, you know I never do that on a first date. Okay, okay, I would and I have but only if I've drunk enough—" She rolls on her own side, pillows her head on her arm now, and though he doesn't shut up, he rolls right along with her, chest to her back, knees fitting behind hers.

"You spooning me Swarley?"

"I don't even have to deny that. My awesomeness alone denies it for me." There silence and his confidence bleeds away with the echo of his words. "I'll deny it to the corner of forever and eternity. Now sleep."

-

The next morning she wakes up with a stiff neck and no blanket. Her feet are cold.

He sleeps oblivious to her pain. It makes for pre-coffee grumpiness to say the least. But the shower runs amazingly hot and she gets her revenge by using his towel and opening one of the toothbrushes she finds hidden behind a fake wall in one of the empty cabinets (the packing is all bright colors and Asian characters of undeterminable origins and a cartoon fish who looks a little like Homer Simpson. She almost chokes on toothpaste when little lights start going off and the thing shrieks—from inside her mouth—that she hasn't been brushing long enough).

-

His bedroom is empty when she gets out of the bathroom. Actually he's not anywhere in the apartment and for a minute she's kinda afraid he's walked out on her (which okay, is a new low even for him because it's his own place and it's not like she couldn't find him if she really wanted to).

She tries to calm down by reminding herself that this isn't a relationship, it's Barney.

Not that it really does anything for her to think of it in those terms just right then, because all it really means is that they aren't tied to one another, that they aren't attached to words like 'long term' or 'for life' (but at the very least they've always been on the same page as 'the morning after'). She tries to stave off a guy related freak out (which is every un-cool and un-Robin and un-Them, no, wait, un-_them_, no capital required) by walking around, checking out the things they kinda glossed over the night before on their voyage to the bedroom.

His porn collection is actually, sorta, impressive—in a sleazy sort of way, like those clear platforms with the goldfish inside—and she spends a few minutes finding all the Canadian titles he acquired in his search for Robin Sparkles.

The actual "Let's Go to the Mall" videotape she finds later but not on his porn shelves. Nope, it's on the one bookshelf that displays real books—leather bound first editions that don't look like they've ever actually been read. It's right there, between _The Picture of Dorian Grey_ and _The Great Gatsby_ (She makes a mental note to make a copy of Sandcastles for his birthday, so he'll have a complete collection).

-

He walks through the front door about twenty minutes later, by which time she's already back in her clothes from the bar. She's pretty sure she now smells of scotch, Marshall's spilled beer, cigars and Barney's soap (he told her once that it was imported from a small island off the coast of New Zealand but she's pretty sure it smells like Irish Springs).

He smiles as the door shuts behind him, nods approvingly at her bare feet. "No shoes, no shirt, the only way to get service 'round here. What up."

"Lame." She smiles, looking down at her bare toes and giving an experimental wiggle.

She looks up and catches him staring, but he's quick and looks up at her wrinkled shirt expectantly. "Hmm, maybe I should have a sign made up."

He nods to himself and walks over to the table. He's already dressed in a pinstripe number, his tie thin and grey and shiny. She kinda wants to pull on it. He puts down a carrying tray with four cups of coffee and a bag.

"What you get?"

"I figured you'd want breakfast. Pfft, Scherbatsky, I know a little something about the care and feeding of a guest." It rankles her more than she's willing to admit, and reminds her a little of Victoria-inspired possessiveness but its too stupid to even contemplate. Besides, Lily made it more than clear that Barney really doesn't know how to interact with a human being in the morning.

He looks a little put out by her surprise at the gesture but the look goes away once she starts going through the bag. "Bagels, spread, yogurt, oh! The kind with the fruit on the bottom!" He practically beams when she tells him she hasn't had that kind in literally forever.

-

She leaves with a half a bagel in one hand and a coffee cup in the other (the yogurt was fairly devoured in the apartment. He only made one comment about how there was no frozen tundra from here to Brooklyn).

Barney insists on walking her to the elevator. He catches her by surprise with a kiss when the doors slide open. He doesn't say anything about the fact that she's clearly showered or her lack of morning breath. She kinda doesn't want to leave.

Outside, she blends right in with the others who stagger in the new-day sun, heads bowed under the weight of the previous night's decisions. Except, there's really no shame in her stride.

-

Two weeks later they stick around in MacLaren's until last call and she doesn't give the cabbie her address after Barney's finished with his.

"Guess you're expecting me to invite you up." He smirks, and she just smiles. "It's a sure thing."

He throws his arm over her shoulders on the elevator ride up. Once they're through his door, she tugs on his tie while he pushes her shirt off—they make out like teenagers, except with better tongue control—and they don't even make it to the bedroom this time (it's weird, but doing it in front of the storm trooper kinda riles her up, because it's almost like having someone watching. Not that she's ever telling Barney that, he might take it as an invitation. Or permission to recruit).

-

She's trying to find a t-shirt to sleep in—completely ignoring his suggestion that she remain birthday suited up—and she's already formulating a plan to steal the pillow when he says, "Oh, Scherbatsky, there's something for you in that cabinet over there." He points at a wood panel on the wall to the left of her.

She finishes the task at hand, because with Barney you never know, and it's better to not be caught completely in the buff, and then works the wall open (this place is a serious James Bond crib. She's almost afraid to lean against the wrong wall and reveal his secret weapons room. Except for how that would literally be awesome). There's only one thing in there.

"You got me a pillow?" She pulls it out and it feels like it came right off her bed, not too firm, not too soft, not stuffed with geese (Marshall's convinced all of them of the high-risk of losing an eyeball attached to those things).

"I was afraid you'd make me watch hockey. Or, y'know, shoot me, stick my body in a trunk and then dump me just this side of the border—and not on the fun, sun-loving, tequila-drinking, donkey-show- having side either—having removed all traces of my American identity so that when the twist ending shows up, and oh my God! I'm _not_ dead, I would never be allowed back from that place and I would have to choose between ending all my sentences with 'eh?' or finishing what you started. Theoretically true story."

"That's completely ridiculous." He shrugs it off and gets into bed.

She follows suit, gets under the blanket and puts her pillow right next to his. She lies back and Barney doesn't lose a minute before he's putting his arm around her. She lets herself relax against him—it's a pillow, not a ring, not a promise, or plea, or even a question, just something to prevent his own insane delusion—breathes in mysterious fabric detergent that was probably made by blind nuns in France or something.

"You're a closet cuddler," she says, because there's no denying the fact, not when he's practically nuzzling the side of her neck and he's not even trying to cop a feel.

"And you're unattractive."

She gasps, plays up the reaction she knows he's expecting—she's hot as all hell and they both know it—and she feels his grin right where her skin disappears at the collar of the shirt. "See what I did there? We both said obvious lies no one in their right mind would ever believe."

Robin just laughs.

-

**End**


End file.
